Walmart Inc. has agreed to a $100 million judgment to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and 11 state attorneys general that the retail giant deceived delivery drivers on its Spark Driver platform about how much they would actually earn for completing deliveries.DOCUMENTED
The joint complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and joined by Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin, alleges Walmart showed Spark drivers inflated base pay and tip amounts before they accepted delivery offers, then quietly reduced what they were actually paid.DOCUMENTED
- Walmart agreed to a $100 million judgment to resolve the FTC and states' complaint.
- The complaint was filed under Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, plus state consumer-protection statutes.
- Spark Driver is Walmart's gig-worker delivery platform, similar to DoorDash or Uber Eats driver networks.
- The settlement requires Walmart to implement an earnings-verification program and bars it from later reducing pay on offers drivers already accepted.
- The Commission voted 2-0 to authorize the complaint and proposed order; it was filed February 26, 2026.
What the complaint alleges
According to the FTC's complaint, Walmart engaged in a pattern of specific deceptive practices around its Spark Driver delivery program. Drivers using the Spark app decide whether to accept "offers" to deliver goods based on the base pay and tip amounts Walmart displays before the driver commits to the job.DOCUMENTED
The complaint alleges Walmart failed to tell drivers that advertised tip amounts were not preauthorized the way payment for the delivered goods was — meaning a driver could complete a job and still not receive the promised tip if the customer's payment method failed, or if Walmart split a customer's tip across multiple drivers on a "batched" delivery without informing anyone in advance.DOCUMENTED
Walmart also allegedly reduced base pay and tip amounts after removing individual stops from batched orders — deliveries combining multiple customers into one trip — often without notifying drivers of the change until after they had already completed the work.DOCUMENTED On incentive pay, the complaint says Walmart advertised bonuses for tasks like referring new drivers, then denied the payouts by adding qualifying conditions, such as requiring the referred driver to work in a specific zone or for a specific store, that were never disclosed upfront.DOCUMENTED
The complaint further alleges that Walmart told customers "100% of tips go to the driver," a claim the FTC says was false on multiple occasions — with Walmart neither passing the tip to the driver nor refunding it to the customer when something went wrong.DOCUMENTED
Why the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act applies
The complaint's inclusion of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — a law more commonly associated with banks and financial institutions — reflects the FTC's theory that Walmart collected drivers' bank account and other financial information as part of onboarding them onto Spark, while simultaneously misleading those same drivers about the earnings tied to that financial relationship.REVIEWED
The Labor Task Force connection
FTC officials tied the settlement directly to the agency's Joint Labor Task Force, which Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson launched in February 2025 to address deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive practices in labor markets. "Labor markets cannot function efficiently without truthful and non-misleading information about earnings and other material terms," said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the agency's announcement. "Today's settlement reflects the Trump-Vance FTC's focus on ensuring a healthy labor market for American workers, which is critical to the nation's success."DOCUMENTED
The task force draws on the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Economics and Office of Policy Planning, reflecting the agency's view that its dual consumer-protection and antitrust mandate positions it to address harms specific to gig and contract labor.REVIEWED
What the settlement requires
Under the proposed stipulated order, Walmart must implement an earnings-verification program designed to ensure Spark drivers actually receive the base pay and tips they were promised. The order also bars Walmart from modifying an offer's base pay, incentive pay, or tip amount after a driver has accepted it, except in narrow circumstances — such as when a driver fails to complete the delivery or a customer cancels the order.DOCUMENTED
Separately, the order bans Walmart from misrepresenting any of the earnings information or other material terms included in delivery offers made to Spark drivers going forward.DOCUMENTED The stipulated final order carries the force of law once signed by the presiding federal judge, and violations of such an order can themselves trigger further enforcement action and penalties.REVIEWED
Part of a broader gig-economy enforcement push
The Walmart settlement follows a string of FTC actions against companies over gig-worker earnings claims, including a 2025 case against Handy Technologies (doing business as Angi Services) over advertised pay that didn't reflect what most workers actually earned, and refund programs tied to advertised, but undelivered, earnings promises at other platforms.REVIEWED Taken together, the pattern suggests regulators view earnings-claim accuracy as a distinct enforcement priority separate from traditional consumer-facing advertising cases, extending consumer-protection law to the relationship between platforms and the workers who depend on them.REVIEWED
Walmart is now barred from changing what a Spark driver was promised for a job after that driver has already accepted it — a structural fix aimed at the specific mechanism the FTC says caused the harm.
What happens next
The $100 million will primarily fund consumer and worker redress tied to the alleged conduct, subject to the terms of the court-approved order. Because the matter was resolved through a stipulated order rather than a contested trial, the underlying factual allegations remain allegations, and Walmart has not been found liable by a court following a trial on the merits.REVIEWED The FTC's Western Region Los Angeles office led the investigation, with lead staff including Aaron M. Schue, Jordan Navarrette, Miles Freeman, David Hankin and Barbara Chun.DOCUMENTED
How the Spark model works
Spark Driver is Walmart's own gig-delivery network, built on the same basic structure as other app-based courier platforms: independent contractors log into an app, review delivery offers that list an expected base rate plus tip, and decide in real time whether the pay is worth accepting the job.REVIEWED Because drivers generally have only seconds to accept or reject an offer, the accuracy of the numbers Walmart displays at that moment is, by the FTC's account, the entire basis on which drivers make their decision — which is precisely why the agency treated post-acceptance changes to pay as a core violation rather than a minor billing dispute.REVIEWED
The 11 states that joined the FTC's complaint brought parallel claims under their own consumer-protection statutes, meaning the $100 million judgment and the associated conduct restrictions apply on both a federal and multistate basis. That structure — a joint federal-state complaint resolved through a single stipulated order — has become increasingly common in labor-market cases, allowing state attorneys general to secure enforceable commitments without each having to litigate a separate action in a different court.REVIEWED
Sources behind this report
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